There has never been any doubt about the size of WP e-Customers. It is a massive project and the planning is still happening.
The initial WP e-Customers plugin is really a prototype to explore how the various sections will work together. How the files will be laid out and make developers jobs easy when working on such a big package. Even the free edition will be an impressive size.
Many Plugins First
But it won’t be anything for a long time yet. I have decided each of the twelve sections will be developed within their own individual plugins. Good strong PHP classes will be created and those classes will be used to build WP e-Customers.
WebTechGlobal Plugin Core
I’m still making daily improvements to my plugin core. The longer I delay the creation of more plugins the better those plugins will by week one due to my plugin cores ready features. So there will be a delay of another 2 weeks minimum before I move on.
Moving On…To Updating Existing Projects
I already have 12 WP plugins and they aren’t great. I admit that. I made them as someone learning PHP, not just WordPress. The rest of the year will be about updating those existing software using the latest version of my plugin core. Each update will come with new features and each of my plugins will be defined a little more to do what the name says they do. This is important for my reputation.
Then I’ll move on to making more plugins. The ones that will cover all the code eventually needed in WP e-Customers.
It’s a long plan but it’s a plan and a strong one. It’s in documents, task lists and is being followed to the letter. There is plenty coming from me.
]]>Right now we are using WP e-Customers on the WebTechGlobal website. You can register using WordPress as normal. Login and you will be confronted with an anti-bot question offered by WP e-Customers. This is what my plugin already offers. Failure to login and answer the question results in the account being deleted.
So my approach is to allow bots to register in WordPress because just 1 hour later the bot accounts are automatically deleted by WP e-Customers. The time can be changed but lets face it if someone wants to use your site they usually complete the entire registration and activation within 2-3 minutes.
On answering the question correctly WP e-Customers creates a phpBB forum account for the user. This is working on my own website right now and you can give it a try. You do not need to be a customer. You’ll find that you can view WP e-Customers downloads screen but it will not offer anything. Eventually it will act as a store with e-commerce ability.
Email Templates and Bulk Email System
Another feature being added is an Email Template post type and a bulk email system. The idea is to allow mass sending of emails without sending them all at once. This has many advantages. Version 0.0.3 already sends emails to customers when their package version increases. This is automated. It is all very new and rough but the procedure is there and working.
Within the next few days I’ll be adding this new email system to the plugins existing schedule system. The schedule procedure is very controlled, balancing all auto-mated actions so all tasks get a turn. This approach with emails will spread out the traffic response so it does not happen all at once. I’m considering the ability to stop emailing in a specific campaign when certain response limits have been met i.e. the click and purchase of a limited product. So we can email 1000 potential customers offering a limited discount of 75% OFF for just 50 people. The schedule system can send a few emails every 10 minutes. After around 170 emails are sent if there are 50 purchased then the remaining 730 emails are cancelled. The functions to make this work are not complete but it is easily done. If you like the sound of it you got to let me know.
]]>WP e-Store plugin is just one shopping cart of many to be integrated. What is important is the procedure I create to bridge the plugins. WP e-Customers automatically establishes a current logged in WordPress users digital purchases within WP e-Store. This automation can now be easily setup for any e-commerce solution.
I’ve coded it to allow more than once e-commerce solution at anytime. I had to consider the possibility that a user of WP e-Customers may have or still uses more than one e-commerce solution. There may be database tables left-over from a cart plugin no longer in use but the data still matters. Covering all the angles is an approach I plan to continue with in WP e-Customers.
WTG Customers
https://www.webtechglobal.co.uk will be the first website to use these new changes. If you happen to have purchased premium plugins from WebTechGlobal you should see each package appear on the Your Downloads screen.
Download Security
If your interested in WP e-Customers you will be happy to know that premium downloads security is in place and complete.
Premium Protection
Premium file security can be improved by automatically renaming the file with a random code. This is planned for the premium edition as is any further security measures. What is provided in the free edition is highly suitable for most start-up websites provided visitors cannot browse your sites file directories.
What is on offer right now is basic and version 0.0.1 has a couple of issues. No worries. Development is daily and there is a lot to come.
Activation Screen Issue
I want to be clear about the activation process. It is not an API/web service activation, no key or anything like that. It’s the beginning of anti-bot security that shouldn’t really apply to administrators. That screen should not be showing up right now. I will get that sorted later today. Activation is meant for subscribers and the activation process will check the subscribers customer/client status.
The idea behind that is to avoid creating all the extra customer data even when a customer is not using the WP e-Customers services. A customer may purchase on WP e-Store for example. They then download their purchase and never return. No point creating a bunch of rows in the database for that user right.
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